Gee, I Think You’re Swell

I’ve spent a lot of time the last couple of days at Classic Television Showbiz, a wondrous website that scours YouTube and other video sites for long-gone television shows, as well as ephemera such as commercials, station breaks, and who-knows-what-else. Among the wonders:

–A full episode, with commercials, of My World and Welcome to It, the NBC series based on the works of James Thurber that won the Emmy for best comedy series yet ran only a single season, 1969-1970. What a cast of familiar TV faces: William Windom in the starring role, with Harold J. Stone, Henry Morgan, and Ray Walston.

–A link to Network Nights, a project of the Museum of Television and Radio in Chicago that recreates entire evenings of primetime programming from the 50s and 60s, with complete episodes of programs plus the stuff in the commercial breaks. The latest link is to ABC in the fall of 1961, featuring The Bugs Bunny Show, Bachelor Father starring John Forsythe, and Calvin and the Colonel, which was essentially an animated remake of the controversial Amos and Andy TV series of the 1950s, created and voiced by the original stars of the radio series, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, as a bear and a fox. The show lasted just one season.

–Full episodes of Batman (which has yet to be released on DVD) and Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.

You’ll find lots of interesting musical links, like these:

–Janis Joplin on The Dick Cavett Show, 1969

–Kiss on Tomorrow with Tom Snyder, circa 1977

–The Yardbirds on The Milton Berle Show, lip-synching “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” in 1966 or 1967

–The Turtles doing “Elenore” on The Mike Douglas Show, 1968

And that’s just the beginning. Classic Television Showbiz is quite astounding, really. Block out a few hours some night soon and play around.

Postscript: There’ll be a new edition of One Day in Your Life at Popdose sometime this evening (U.S. time), so check it out.